In the industry of art and design - as well as other creative endeavors - my sense is that people look more for recognition and fame - and the monetary wealth that comes with it - than entering into an environment that expands their creativity.
Jack Wolfe, who’s studio I visited when I was 8 years old and who’s painting we lived with in our dining room, enjoyed a career with every hallmark of success. Every hallmark that is, except for fame. To Wolfe, fame and success were opposing ideals, and very early on he made an unshakable commitment, not toward marketability and commercial advancement, but to his unique vision as an artist and his integrity as a man. In this sense, the elegant, daring and consequential paintings we have from Wolfe today resonate with that voice.
With his future as one of the great artists of his time laid out neatly before him, Wolfe moved to New York City in the early 1950’s. NYC had become the postwar epicenter of the art world while it was experiencing the first real revolution in American Art - Abstract Expressionism. However, almost immediately upon his arrival, Wolfe became disenfranchised with the overtly commercial nature of the art scene, spurning fame and security in an unwillingness to bend his creative vision to the expectations of others. After four short months, he left New York to return to his native Massachusetts. http://ckcontemporary.com/jack-wolfe/
Bridget Berlin was Andy Warhol’s right hand (wo)man whom I wrote about in a previous blog post. Coming from a fortuned family and knowing as a female she would not achieve the success of a man, she gave it all away to Andy: https://www.groundswellbyjo.com/from-brancusi-to-bueys
Others gave up success in favor of maintaining a creative outlet. Here’s a quote about Henri Cartier-Bresson from Sergio Larrain who sums up why they both gave up photo journalism in favor of the creative approach to photography - at what was then the early stages of using the camera to promote sales of product, which subsequently boomed.
“Lorrain did seem to have an acute understanding of the way success corrupts artist vision.“ The photographer’s tragedy is that once he achieves a certain level of quality or fame he wants to continue and he gets completely lost.
http://littlebrownmushroom.com/popsicle-46-the-letters-of-sergio-larrain/